Tbubui sat up. “Good!” she repeated.
At that moment Khaemwaset and Hori stepped out of the terrace’s shade and came towards them, Hori limping awkwardly. Tbubui rose and reverenced them with a grace that sent a pang of envy through Sheritra. A month ago I would not have cared, she told herself, or even if I did it would not have been such a violent caring. I would have sneered at her, but now I want that unselfconscious assurance for Harmin’s sake. She herself scrambled up for her father’s kiss. Hori gave her a twisted grin and sank into one of the chairs the servants were rushing to provide.
“So,” Khaemwaset began, his eyes on Tbubui after a cursory but warm greeting to his wife, “we males come to interrupt an obvious idyll. You all look satisfied with yourselves. Have you settled the affairs of Egypt between you?”
It is not like Father to be condescending, Sheritra thought. He seems very uneasy. And why is Hori staring so sourly at the ground? Well, I will not let either of them spoil my day. Her mother was talking of Tbubui’s invitation and Sheritra listened as she and Khaemwaset tossed her decision about between them. Her father was not exactly objecting. It seemed to the girl that under the prescribed, formal objections was an eagerness to see her go that was equal to her mother’s. Puzzled and a little hurt, she tried to catch his eye, seeking reassurance, but could not. Tbubui was watching, her gaze, also narrowed against the sun, moving slowly from one to the other. She made no move to interrupt and Sheritra thought that her stillness had a smug quality about it. Finally her father turned to her.
“I shall miss you, Little Sun,” he said merrily. “But of course your mother and I will visit you often until you are ready to come home again.”
Mother will not, Sheritra thought mutinously, and you, dear Father … All at once an idea flashed into her mind and she exhaled quietly. Could it be? Khaemwaset was now jovial, animated. Sheritra turned her attention unobtrusively back to Tbubui. She was smiling to herself and fanning a hand across the blades of grass, to and fro. Sheritra again inspected her father’s sparkling eyes and wide gestures, her heart sinking. So that was it. If I am actually in Tbubui’s house I give Father an excuse to visit there whenever he wishes. And I am suddenly convinced that he will wish to visit a very great deal.
Sheritra did not know why the conviction of Khaemwaset’s interest in the other woman was causing her anxiety. Perhaps such a change would be good for him, be rejuvenating for a while. But the girl, remembering the odd and awkward conversation she had had with him not so long ago, was sure it was not so. She herself liked and admired Tbubui, but then she was not a man. Tbubui was dangerous to men, her instincts told her.
Surreptitiously, from under lowered lashes, she scrutinized her brother. Hori’s shining dark head was down, his eyes fixed unseeingly on his bruised knee. Oh Hathor no, Sheritra thought with something approaching horror. Not both of them! Does Tbubui know?
She and Khaemwaset were discussing the scroll. “I have decided to let Sisenet inspect it,” Khaemwaset was saying reluctantly. “But he will have to do so here. I am responsible for its safety before the gods and the ka of the man who owned it. I am truly at the point, Tbubui, where I would welcome any assistance in its deciphering.” Tbubui answered immediately, intelligently, and Sheritra looked at her mother.
Nubnofret had withdrawn from the conversation. She lay full-length on her side, eyes closed, and something about the stiffness of her pose told Sheritra that her mother’s afternoon was not ending as delightfully as it had begun.
Without warning Sheritra felt hot and weak. Emotional undercurrents swirled around her—her mother’s formless apprehension. Hori’s sulkiness, her father’s uncharacteristic animation—and in the centre of it Tbubui, who a short time ago had been all lazy, sultry woman and who now was all serious earnest student of history. Does she know? Sheritra asked herself again. If she does suspect, then surely she would not be extending an invitation to me! Or would she? She came to her feet and the conversation broke off.
“Father, give me leave to go into the house,” she said. “I have spent a full day in the sun and I am very tired. I want to be bathed before dinner.” She knew that her words were stilted, that she was standing slouched and ill at ease, that she was once more the family embarrassment, but she could not help it. Surprised, Khaemwaset nodded.
“Of course,” he said.
Sheritra forced herself to turn to Tbubui. “I will arrive at your home tomorrow afternoon,” she said.
“Until then, Princess,” was the polite reply.
Sheritra left them, hurrying around the pond and the gurgling fountain and past the flower beds in an agony of self-consciousness, feeling as though they were all staring at her back. She reached the entrance and rushed inside with great relief. Perhaps I should not go, she thought dismally, unaware of the guards’ salute as she passed them in the passage. Perhaps Tbubui is using me as an excuse for Father to visit her without suspicion. And perhaps you are an overly sensitive idiot, another voice mocked her, with too much imagination for your own good. Be selfish, Sheritra. Put yourself next to Harmin and do not worry about the rest.
Just before the door to her own quarters she looked up and her reflection met her, a stooped, pinched, homely girl to whom even the smoothly beaten copper of the floor-toceiling relief could not give the illusion of beauty. I cannot change myself, she thought in a dismay that bordered on panic. Only he has the power to change me and I am determined to be given that chance. For once I will not care about any of them. She turned away from the daunting copper image and entered her rooms.
The evening meal that day seemed interminable. Her mother, obviously suffering a headache, had done her best to entertain two of Pharaoh’s Heralds who had arrived unexpectedly on their way south into Nubia. Later, Sheritra sought out Hori. He was sitting morosely just inside the main entrance of the house, his foot propped up on a stool, gazing into the stultifying hot darkness that seemed to take its breathless heat from the orange torches now illuminating the forecourt and the paved path to the watersteps. He glanced up as she folded her linens under her and sank by his feet at the top of the entrance stair. The smile he gave her was his usual winsome grin, but she was not deceived.
“You are unhappy, aren’t you, Hori?” she said without preamble. “I do not think it is the pain of your knee, either.”
He stirred, swore softly, then chuckled. “Your perception is always disconcerting,” he replied. “No, it is not my knee. Father will remove the stitches tomorrow.”
She waited for him to go on but he did not. Fleetingly, she wondered if she ought to keep silent, but she was afraid of the distances that were opening in the family, the imperceptible rifts between her parents, between her father and herself, between her father and Hori. She felt a desperate need to remain close to this beautiful brother whom she loved so much, for without him, she realized, she would have no one. In spite of her passion for Harmin she did not yet trust him completely. “You are in love with Tbubui, aren’t you?” she murmured. For a while she feared that he was not going to answer her, or worse, that he would lie, but in the end he slumped forward and his cheek brushed her hair.
“Yes,” he admitted, and his voice cracked on that one word.
“Does she know?”
He sighed. “Yes. I told her everything when I went to see her yesterday. She suggested that I could visit her whenever I wanted but that we could be nothing more than friends.”
Her heart went out to him. He sounded confused and hopeless. “Do you accept that?”
He straightened. “Of course not!” he snapped. “I will find some means of winning her. I am after all one of the most sought-after single men in Egypt and certainly the handsomest. She cannot resist me if I flaunt my body in front of her often enough.”
Sheritra was appalled at the cynical tone. “But Hori, you have never …your strength has been …”
“Well perhaps I have simply not cared enough until now to turn my good looks into the weapon they
are,” he grated. “She has no man. If someone else held her affections she would have told me. No, Sheritra. She eats at my vitals and one day, one day, I will eat at hers.”
She was shocked both at the crudity of his language and the coarseness of his voice. Desperately she sought the brother whose cheerful, constant unselfishness had made him beloved among so many. “Have you spoken to Father about it?” she asked.
“No. When she surrenders I will approach him, but until then it is none of his business.”
So Hori, wrapped in his own agony, was oblivious to Khaemwaset’s. It was just as well. The implications of the situation came into Sheritra’s mind in all their potential horror. Quite apart from the strife that would ensue between her two favourite men, there was the future. If Hori won her he would of course build another wing onto the house and she would be under Khaemwaset’s gaze at every hour. But surely that was better than having her here as Khaemwaset’s Second Wife, with all the authority that position entailed. Tbubui at dinner, Tbubui commandeering the barge, Tbubui and Khaemwaset on his couch while Nubnofret lay alone … And Tbubui and me, Sheritra thought, shrinking. Tbubui and Hori. Oh gods. Let me be wrong about Father. Let Hori’s infatuation end as suddenly as it began.
Hori once more bent close to her until she could smell the sour wine on his breath. “You are going to stay with her tomorrow,” he whispered. “She likes you, Sheritra. Talk to her about me. Make her think. Will you do that for me?”
She jerked away. “I will try, Hori,” she cried out, “but all is not as it seems. Oh why did she have to come into our lives! I am afraid!”
He did not answer, did not try to comfort her, and she got up and left him, walking through the murmurous house towards her own apartments where her servants were packing her belongings. Her mind told her to order the things returned to their tiring boxes but her heart yearned for Harmin. He had kissed her again today, both of them lying in the long grasses at the river’s edge, hidden from the eyes of servants and soldiers on the barge. The sun had been a dreaming, sultry presence making her pliant, liquid with desire, and Harmin’s black hair had fallen across her neck, his tongue cool against the convolutions of her ear. I can do nothing, she thought as she entered her ante-room to Bakmut’s somewhat harried bow. I cannot stem the disquieting tide of powerful change sweeping over this family. I am no longer apart from it, for it is tumbling and buffeting me also. Each one of us must look to himself.
She left the watersteps late the following morning with Bakmut, all her personal servants and four guards, selected by Amek and approved by her father. Nubnofret had bid her a casual goodbye, embracing her briefly and assuring her that she must come home as soon as she wished. But Khaemwaset had drawn her aside and thrust a piece of papyrus into her hands. “Your horoscope for Phamenoth,” he had said brusquely. “I cast them all last night. Little Sun, I do not like it. Read it for yourself as soon as possible and remember that I am only as far away as the mouth of one of your guards. I will come and see you within the week.” Suddenly she clung to him as though she had been banished to the Delta for some heinous crime, missing him already. Yet under the burst of homesickness was the cold core of her determination, and besides, she had not missed the undertone of eagerness in his voice. Kissing him on his cheek she turned and walked onto the barge. Hori had not appeared at all. She waved to her parents once and disappeared into the cabin.
It took the rowers less than an hour to pull the barge to Tbubui’s watersteps, even though the prevailing north wind of summer had begun to blow and the river was so low that very little current remained to carry them along. Sheritra sat in the cabin, a silent Bakmut at her feet, the horoscope still unread in her hand. She felt tense, dislocated, as though instead of going to stay with a new friend for a few weeks she was setting out across the Great Green, her destination unknown. Exacerbating the impression was the knowledge that both her parents, for dissimilar reasons, were glad to see her go, and Hori too wanted her away from home to help him pursue his own ends. It was irrational, Sheritra knew, but she felt that he had betrayed her.
In spite of the light, familiar voices of her servants gathered under the awning on the deck, in spite of Amek’s stolid, reliable soldiers into whose hands she would have placed her life without a second thought, she felt defenceless and very alone. I should move to Pi-Ramses, she thought painfully. Grandfather would give me a suite in the palace. Aunt Bint-Anath would care for me. I hate Memphis now. That daunting awareness made her realize fully for the first time how far behind she had left the fragile, shy girl she had been such a short time ago. I am still fragile, she thought grimly, oh so very fragile, but not quite in the same way. There was an innocence about me then that I can recognize only now, but should I mourn or rejoice at the change? I cannot say.
Harmin was waiting for her, standing on the bottom riser of the watersteps and gazing upstream when she emerged from the cabin at the captain’s warning shout. Sheritra could see his brooding face lighten with a smile as he spotted her, and he bowed several times as her scribe handed her reverentially onto the stone beside him. At her word, the rest of her train began to stream along the sandy path towards the house, but the guards and Bakmut remained with her.
“Harmin,” she said, and he was free to speak
“Welcome to my home, Highness,” he responded gravely. “I cannot tell you how delighted I am that you decided to accept my mother’s invitation. I am your humble slave and I promise to gratify any desire you may express while you are here.”
She met his eyes, aware as never before of the strong, regular beats of her heart, the raw constriction in her belly as she looked at him.
“I have a litter here for you,” he went on. “The path is not long but the heat is great.”
“Thank you, I have brought my own,” she replied. “But I don t really need it today, Harmin. I prefer to walk. What a lovely shade the palms cast! Shall we go? I am eager to see this house for myself. Father and Hori have described it as unique. Bakmut, give me my whisk.” She started forward and Harmin fell in with her step. The flies of summer were growing thicker every day, a scourge of black, salt-seeking creatures that settled with a maddening persistence around the eyes and mouth and on any sweat-slicked skin. To Sheritra they seemed more aggressive and numerous here under the palms than at home. She applied the black horsehair whisk to her naked flesh with an absent-minded precision as Harmin spoke of the fecundity of the trees, the coming date harvest and the report of his steward on the progress of his crops in Koptos.
“My father took very little interest in his holdings,” he explained, “and relied on the steward to handle the fellahin, but I liked to walk beside the canals at home and watch the grain and the vegetables spring up fresh and green.”
“You speak as though you miss it,” Sheritra observed, and he agreed.
“Sometimes I do,” he said softly, “but I do not miss Koptos itself. My early memories of the town are not very happy ones. See, Highness!” He pointed. “Our house!”
Sheritra’s first impression of the building was not like Khaemwaset’s or Hori’s. In spite of the fresh plaster and white-wash, in spite of the lone gardener toiling in the small garden, the estate had a forlorn, neglected air. The walls seemed bleached rather than unstained, the lawn a struggle to hold back the palms rather than a pleasant clearing, the quiet privacy an atmosphere of dereliction.
But that impression soon faded. She greeted a bowing Tbubui and Sisenet and entered the plain hall with curiosity. “I can see how my father was delighted with your home,” she told them after glancing about. “It might have been built and furnished a hundred hentis ago!” Then fearing that she had offended them she added hastily, “Such taste and simplicity is wonderful, Tbubui. One cannot think or pray when one is surrounded by ornate clutter.” She could hear her servants somewhere beyond the transverse passage at the rear of the hall, and the clatter of boxes. Her soldiers ignored the family, vanishing into the house with the authority o
f the Prince behind them, and her scribe followed, palette in hand. There was no sign of the household’s own staff.
“Come, Highness,” Tbubui said as Sisenet bowed again and excused himself. “This is the way to the room I have prepared for you. Please command your servants to order the routine of the house as though it were your own. Ours will not interfere.” Meekly Sheritra stepped after Tbubui’s yellow-swathed back, feeling Harmin behind her. “The passage at this end leads directly into the garden,” Tbubui was saying. “There is a door but it is only closed when the khamsin blows, to keep the desert sand out of the house. My brother, Harmin and I will be sleeping at the other end. I am sorry that there is no room for your servants to stay in the building itself but there is ample room for them at the rear, in the compound.”
“Bakmut always sleeps on my floor,” Sheritra said, and turned in at the door Tbubui was now standing beside. The room was not large but, like the rest of the house, it seemed so. Sheritra swiftly took in the couch, table, chair, stool and cosmetic table and nodded to Bakmut. “Have my things brought in.”
“I have removed my own tiring chests,” Tbubui told her, “but of course if your Highness needs them they are at your disposal.”
Sheritra smiled and touched her briefly. “Thank you, Tbubui. You have gone to great trouble to make me comfortable.” The woman and her son understood the dismissal. As the door closed behind them Sheritra sank onto the couch with a sigh. She would have liked more light, for the room was very dim, but more light would have meant more heat and the sweet coolness was very welcome. “I will not need the fans here,” she remarked to Bakmut. “See that my own linen is put on the couch, and send the scribe to me as soon as the soldiers have worked out a schedule. Do you think we will eat before long, Bakmut? I am very hungry.”
“I can ask, Highness,” the girl said, and went out. Sheritra sat on, listening to the silence, her eyes on the two high patches of square white light on the farther wall cast by the windows that had been cut just under the ceiling. The thought that Harmin was somewhere close by gave her a thrill of excitement. I am going to enjoy this to the fullest, she told herself, her earlier misgivings forgotten for now.
Scroll of Saqqara Page 27
